


New Year, New World

by WitchyBee



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Champagne, Cuddling & Snuggling, Daisy is there because I say so, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Friendship, Gift Fic, Hopeful Ending, Light Angst, M/M, New Year's Eve, Not monster!Jon but he is having a bad time, Post-Apocalypse, Team Bonding, Tenderness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-01
Updated: 2020-01-01
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:07:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22033042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WitchyBee/pseuds/WitchyBee
Summary: New Year's Eve after the apocalypse.
Relationships: Basira Hussain & Alice "Daisy" Tonner, Jonathan Sims & Alice "Daisy" Tonner, Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims
Comments: 13
Kudos: 179
Collections: End-of-Year Exchange 2019





	New Year, New World

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AvataroftheVast](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AvataroftheVast/gifts).



> This was going to be a Christmas fic but I overshot it and ended up with a New Years fic. I hope you like it!

It would almost be an idyllic winter evening, were it not for the circumstances. A quaint cottage tucked away in the Scottish countryside. Snow blanketing the garden. A crackling fireplace to ward off the cold. Except the cottage is a safehouse that hasn’t felt truly safe in months. Boarded up windows obscure not just their view of gently falling snowflakes but, more importantly, the sky’s view of them. The fireplace became essential for light and heat once the generator died a few weeks ago.

Martin’s phone is largely useless these days, but his calendar app still works. He never expected they would still be in the Highlands at the year’s end. But he never expected any of this, really. Suddenly the world has been flooded with fourteen flavors of evil bullshit, and then Jon was in no state to travel anywhere for a while even if they did have a destination, and then Basira found them, and then they found Daisy.

And then and then and then...

Somehow, it is already New Year’s Eve. Not that the date or even the passage of linear time means as much as it used to anymore. The important thing is they are still alive and together which, selfish as it might be, is all Martin can bring himself to care about.

He glances down at Jon who is finally sleeping as peacefully as he ever can, his head resting in Martin’s lap. At least the only nightmares he endures are completely his own. The Eye no longer appears to need its Archivist retreading others’ old traumas night after night.

There are more good days than bad ones now, on the whole. Today had been...decidedly not a good day. The Stranger, he assumes, or possibly the Spiral. Either way, for nearly an hour this morning Jon did not even know his own name, and he hadn’t recognized Martin at all.

“Dinner’s in ten minutes,” Basira tells him, entering the room. After a moment’s pause, she asks, “How’re you holding up?”

“We’re okay,” he replies almost automatically, like a mantra he’ll believe if he just repeats it enough. He gently threads his fingers through Jon’s hair.

“Not what I asked. How are _you_ , Martin?”

“I’m, um...I’m scared, pretty much all the time. End of the world, y’know? And Jon—he’s right here with me, I know that, and he’s doing a lot better, I think. Or at least that’s what I tell myself. But I just...I can’t lose him again.”

“Yeah. I get it,” Basira says, her gaze drifting toward the kitchen where Daisy is busy preparing something that...well, it looks almost like a chicken. “You’re his anchor, though, and he’s yours. I didn’t think that sort of thing really mattered. I mean, how could it? But it saved you from the Lonely. It brought Daisy back to me.”

“You think it can save him, too, if it comes to that?”

Basira shrugs. “It’s all we’ve got right now.”

* * *

Jon is distracted all through dinner, like he’s trying to catch the lyrics of a song playing quietly in the other room. It will be worse in London, Martin fears, but they can’t stay here forever. Jonah Magnus isn’t going to kill himself, after all.

Daisy pops the cork in a cheap bottle of champagne that she and Basira managed to scrounge up from a nearby village during their last supply run.

“So, think I might take up knitting,” she says. “Anyone else have an exciting resolution?”

Silence. It’s been quite a while since they let themselves contemplate anything beyond the immediate future.

“Fix the world, I guess?” Basira offers.

“Boring, but given the circumstances, I’ll allow it. Martin?”

“I suppose mine would be to start writing poetry again,” he says, sheepish.

“That’s more like it. What about you, Jon?”

There’s no answer. Jon is idly tracing impossible patterns—fractals, it looks like—on the surface of the wooden table.

Martin touches his hand. “Jon? Can you, um...see us?”

“Yes. Yes, I-I see you. I’m fine,” he says. “Sorry. What...”

“New Year’s resolutions. What’s yours?” Daisy asks. “Aside from finding a way to stop the eyepocalypse, obviously.”

“We are not calling it that.”

“Too late. You’re dodging the question, Sims.”

“I don’t know, honestly. I don’t want to hurt anyone else. And uh—I think we should get a cat.” The last part he says to Martin specifically, who isn’t sure it counts as a resolution, strictly speaking, but he’s not about to mention that.

“Yeah,” Martin says, smiling. “I think we should, too.”

Daisy turns to Basira. “C’mon, let’s leave the lovebirds in peace.”

Jon chokes on his champagne. Martin feels his cheeks flush. They don’t usually...talk about it. There’s a lot of things they don’t talk about, in fact.

“I’ve missed her,” Jon says softly. And he had, Martin could tell, although Jon never said as much aloud during their three weeks of respite (“The eye of the storm,” he called it later. Martin didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.) He’s just grateful that Jon has a friend, someone who was there for the man he loves when Martin couldn’t be.

* * *

It’s getting late. Basira takes first watch; Daisy is dozing on the couch before her own shift. They ought to be asleep as well. Jon is considerably more lucid than he has been all day, though, if the guilty expression is any indication, and now he’s just sort of...clinging to Martin. He never thought Jon would be such a tactile person, not that he minds at all. Things have changed between them since the Lonely in a number of ways. He is perfectly content to hold Jon close like this for as long as possible. Words are still a bit more difficult. They’re both trying, the best they can.

“I’m sorry,” Jon whispers against Martin’s neck. “I keep ruining things. First Christmas and now...”

He is referring to another bad day; the Corruption, that time, or perhaps simply a normal illness intensified by Archivist powers. Jon had spent the entirety of Christmas in bed, delirious with fever, a blindfold tied tightly around his eyes. (It doesn’t actually stop the Seeing altogether, just helps take the edge off somewhat.) To be honest, it hardly even ranks in Martin’s personal top five worst Christmases.

“Can’t really blame you if the Eye's a bit of a Grinch, right?”

Jon’s soft laugh, even muffled against Martin’s shoulder, has quickly become his favorite sound in the world.

“It’s just...I promised I wouldn’t leave you.”

“You didn’t leave me, Jon. And besides, we agreed not to apologize for—”

“—being trapped, unconscious, or otherwise incapacitated. I know. But you deserve so much better than all this, Martin, especially after everything else I’ve put you through this year.”

“You were in a coma. That wasn’t your fault, either. None of this is,” Martin says firmly.

Jon sighs. “I suppose.”

He’s probably just too tired to argue the point, but Martin will take it. This is enough for now. It’s got to be.

“It’s midnight,” Martin says.

“Is it? I don’t think—”

“Do you want to know how I know?”

“Uh...yes?”

“Because I really want to kiss you.”

“Oh. Right. Well, it is traditional.”

Martin can hear the smile in Jon’s voice, which he adds to his mental list of favorite sounds in the world as Jon kisses him.

Whatever the next year holds, they’re going to face it together.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on Tumblr @podcastenthusiast.


End file.
